"Remarkable" Declares The Memphis Flyer!

Audience watches The Faithful on the big screen at the Crosstown Theater, Memphis, TN, during Elvis Week. This Memphis Premiere was co-hosted by Indie Memphis, moderated by Briighid Wheeler and programmed by Miriam Bale.

Click here to read the full review in The Memphis Flyer.

The Faithful's West Coast Tour begins October 8th, Tickets now Available!

THE FAITHFUL's West Coast Theatrical Release kicks off on October 8th, 2021 with a week's run on Los Angeles at Laemmle Theatres, with additional screenings at San Francisco's Roxie Theater and SIFF Seattle's Film Center.

Tickets and more information

Thank you Camden International Film Festival (CIFF)!

It was like a dream to bring The Faithful to CIFF - to watch an incredible lineup of films together. The festival directors, programmers, staff, and volunteers pulled off the seemingly impossible opening its doors, feeding our souls, while managing to keep conscientious attendees safe and healthy.

Q&A following The Faithful’s World Festival Premiere, moderated by Grace Remington. Sept 19, 2021. Journey’s End, Rockland, Maine.

They even converted this boat hanger on the harbor into a proper theater with DCP projection and 5.1 surround sound!

Thank you Ben Fowlie, Sean Flynn, Jeanelle Augustin, Milton Guillen, Camille Howard, Eynar Pineda, Anna Feder, Jean & Mark Patiky! It was the premiere we dreamed of - well worth the wait.

Pope sighting by CIFF filmmaker Melissa Gira Grant the day before our screening. CIFF. Maine.

Thank you Kopkind Colony!

One afternoon we came - built the tent, setup the screen and projection, prepped, cleaned, bbq’d, brought food and drink, four-legged friends, and Covid-safe good cheer. As the sun set, the screenings began. First, we watched an excerpt from Chuck Light and Daniel Keller’s Far out about life on and after a Vermont commune, a greatly anticipated work-in-progress, followed by The Faithful which was last here as a work-in-progress eleven years ago. Here are some photos from now and then.

Huge thanks to the Kopkind Colony JoAnn Wypijewski for programming it, John Scagliotti and David for hosting, and Christopher Dawes for projecting; and, to all who came to watch and celebrate together!

August 28, 2021. The Faithful community screening at Kopkind Colony during Andy Kopkind’s birthday week.

Summer 2010. “Film cam” at Kopkind Colony where director Annie Berman first workshopped The Faithful.

For Immediate Release: The Faithful launches World Premiere March 19th, 2021

Annie Berman’s timely documentary THE FAITHFUL premieres at www.The-Faithful.com March 19th, 7PM EST, and will be available on streaming services March 22nd.

THE FAITHFUL explores the public’s connection to and deep veneration of Elvis Presley, Pope John Paul II and Princess Diana--and what it means in terms of memorabilia, copyright law, and memory. Over the course of 20 years, Berman profiles these figures’ biggest fans, makes numerous pilgrimages to Vatican City, Graceland, and Kensington Palace--and sees the film itself increasingly entwined with her daily life and identity. 

Thanks to support from Grant for the Web, THE FAITHFUL also hosts its own online screening platform, bypassing traditional gatekeepers. To join the live premiere event, viewers pay, watch and interact with the filmmakers on our site: the-faithful.com

 As the first feature film receiving a Grant for the Web, THE FAITHFUL is excited to function as a test case in making alternative film monetization models a reality. Following release, the film’s team is committed to sharing this model with the filmmaking community in order to strengthen the independent, direct-to-audience distribution ecosystem. 

Check out the trailer here: the-faithful.com

Screening links and interviews are available by emailing info@the-faithful.com

***FULL INFORMATION BELOW***

THE FAITHFUL

THE KING, THE POPE, THE PRINCESS

 Documentary Feature, 90 mins. HD. Stereo. Color. 

Trailer  &   Website

Instagram, Facebook & Twitter

SYNOPSIS

A Pope John Paul II lollipop. An Elvis Presley shower curtain. A Princess Diana teacup. These are just some of the countless pieces of memorabilia that these pop culture icons’ most devoted fans collect and cherish… but why? The Faithful‘s director, Annie Berman, explores the deep veneration and legacies of the Pope, the Princess, and the King. Over the course of 20 years, Berman profiles these figures’ biggest fans and makes numerous pilgrimages to Vatican City, Graceland, and Kensington Palace. As the years go by, the film itself becomes increasingly entwined with Berman’s daily life and identity, much like how these officially-licensed knick-knacks define the fans she filmed. 

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

ANNIE BERMAN (Producer, Director, Writer, Cinematographer, Narrator, Co-Editor) is a media artist living and working in New York City, Annie Berman was named one of Independent Magazine’s 10 Filmmakers to Watch, her films, videos, performances, and installations have shown internationally in galleries, festivals, universities, and conferences, including the MoMA Documentary Fortnight, Rooftop Films, Galerie Patrick Ebensperger Berlin, Kassel Hauptbahnhof, Spring / Break Art Show, Flux Factory, Babycastles Gallery, and the Rome Independent Film Festival where she was awarded the Best Experimental Film Prize. Her work has received support from the Puffin Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, Wave Farm, Grant for the Web, the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts, the Center for Independent Documentary, Signal Culture, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and UnionDocs. She holds an MFA in Integrated Media Art from Hunter College, and is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective.

ABOUT THE RELEASE

In the current COVID era, even while our beloved cinemas and film festivals remain largely shuttered, home entertainment demand continues to grow. Now is the time for experimentation and innovation in independent film distribution. Even before the pandemic, the consolidation of the streaming giants and Amazon and Netflix producing their own content meant that independents recognized the need of finding alternative modes of connecting directly with audiences.

 With the generous support of Grant for the Web, our team is finding a new way to introduce films to global moviegoers--and is using The Faithful to pave this path forward. Grant for the Web is a $100M fund created to boost an open, fair, and inclusive internet for all creators. The Faithful is the only feature film supported by this grant to date. Together, we are launching a worldwide DIY virtual release this March and releasing our data to the filmmaking community to strengthen the ecosystem of independent distribution direct to audiences.

A virtual theatrical release will be followed by an SVOD release debuting on Cinnamon.video, an alluring new video sharing platform that delivers immediate revenue for creators, and fair treatments for all parties, without resorting to advertising. 

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

“The film’s voice is at once intimate, humorous, human, and insightful. A very ambitious undertaking, and yet so rewarding. An incredible romp. I loved it.” - Vivian Kleiman, filmmaker, educator, activist

"I was both fascinated and very moved by the human spirit evident in the film, the contemplation of connection, imagery, love and loss. An epic journey, both intimate and global. A work of art." -Anne Flatté, filmmaker

"Deeply thoughtful - like a Ross McElwee film with a hint of Jewish sensibility" - Amy Geller and Gerald Peary, filmmakers, curators, educators

“An extraordinary compendium, and accomplishment... entirely resonant with our moment in time. -Judith Tolnick Champa, Independent International Curator

“A brilliant film. Much more than can be captured in a log line. A meditation and exploration on our complicated relationships to images, icons and institutions.” -Anna Feder, Curator and educator at Emerson College

----

A Fish in the Hand Production

Produced in association with The Center for Independent Documentary and The Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective

The Faithful: The King, The Pope, The Princess

The Faithful, LLC. Annie Berman. 175 Claremont Avenue, Suite 63. NY, NY 10027. 917-436-6601 

info@the-faithful.com. www.the-faithful.com

Filmmakers: What If You Don’t Need A Movie Theatre (Or Streaming Services) At All?

The Faithful’s experiences creating a bespoke viewing and film payments platform

by Matt Mankins

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we can make new monetization and payment models work for movies. The documentary I’m producing, The Faithful, started filming over twenty years ago. When our team was–finally–ready to release it and find distribution, there was one little challenge: A global pandemic.

To be fair, COVID-19 compounded an already challenging distribution landscape that made it nearly impossible for us to pursue the typical festival, theater, educational, and streaming pathways. Eventually, we started asking the question: Do we need theatres at all?

Don’t get me wrong: I love the experience of going to the movies. I love the breadth of videos available via streaming. But what we were after for The Faithful is somewhere in the middle: a shared experience like you get in the movie theatres with the distribution made possible via streaming. Could we build our ideal experience?

After evaluating some off-the-shelf options, we decided it might just be possible to assemble a screening platform using existing tools for The Faithful. With funding from our partner, Grant for the Web, we hope to show that filmmakers don’t need a large platform’s buy-in to release and monetize feature films.

The Faithful itself, which you should really watch (hint hint) is a feature-length documentary about fandom, faith, image, and copyright led by followers of Elvis Presley, Pope John Paul II, and Diana, Princess of Wales. It started with the discovery of a Pope lollipop for sale at the Vatican, taking filmmaker Annie Berman on an obsessive multi-decade journey into the memorials and annual pilgrimages for these icons.

But, for now, let’s talk about how we created our own screening platform and plan to use it to make back our investment.

Building Our Digital Theatre

Our tech stack needed to mirror the functionality of a traditional cinema. We organized our work around “ticket booth”, “lobby”, “cinema”, and “post-screening question and answer” functionalities. Although we talk about parts of the theatre that we’re replicating, we don’t adhere to a strict skeuomorphic translation. Instead, we prefer to be inspired by what users expect in terms of experience, but embracing a decidedly digital interface.

1. Ticket booth: Just like in traditional movie theatres, we want to give those who are financially supporting our work access to our movie. We built a digital entitlements system–a ticket taker–allowing holders of “passes” or “tickets” to access the “inner” parts of the theatre.

2. Lobby: We want to create an event out of the experience of seeing our film. While streaming services are asynchronous, our movies start at particular times and people assemble to watch them. Part of this experience is being able to talk to your friends and other moviegoers.

3. Cinema: This is the actual experience of watching the movie.

4. Post-screening: Our screening events feature question and answer sessions with the filmmaker and special guests

Because of the lack of turnkey solutions for filmmakers (we explored various streaming partnerships, but found that the negatives outweigh the positives for our particular case), we built The Faithful’s tech platform from the bottom up so viewers could buy screening tickets on the site, watch the film on the site, and then participate in activities on the site. We expect to make the film available on screening services later on, but still feel that we are best positioned to approximate something resembling a conventional premiere ourselves.

Our ticket booth allows for the purchase of entitlements either through credit card payments (via Stripe) or by purchasing a Coil pass. Coil is a web monetization product that allows for streaming micropayments from ordinary end users to content creators.

Although the technology is in its infancy, we think it could be part of the solution for supporting movies like ours so we want to support it. (Full disclosure: I work with web monetization as part of my work as a Mozilla Fellow. Questions about the web’s economic future and if there’s a better way forward than the ad-supported model fascinate me.)

We’re actively working on our Lobby, Cinema, and Post-screening experience and are guided by these product principles:

• We want moviegoers to share the movie at the same time. We want to create a communal viewing experience.

• We want the quality of the video to be as high as possible, and are working to support mobile, desktop, and set-top boxes.

• We realize our audience will have multiple devices and want to make use of them. Silence may be golden in the movie theatre, but we are exploring ways to keep users communicating throughout the movie as if they’re watching at home.

• We want to make the transition between various technologies and phases as easy as walking through rooms in a theatre.

I’ll follow up with detailed screenshots of the experience to show what we ended up building. If you’re interested in joining our team, please reach out!

Open Distribution Isn’t YouTube

Filming on The Faithful started 20 years ago–a story in itself–in another digital era. Back then, possibility was in the air and footage was stored on bulky hard disk drives. Since then, it’s become infinitely easier to store and distribute digital video and much, much harder to create a website. Streaming and VOD services greatly simplify the process for filmmakers; they just sign a contract and the platform handles viewing and distribution in exchange for a hefty amount of the revenue.

However, all that ease comes at a price for filmmakers and viewers. Filmmakers lose control over pricing, distribution, sales and viewership metrics, and sometimes even over creative control of future projects. (Many film festivals we spoke to wanted our film to be first shown in their jurisdictions–what does that even mean in the global context of YouTube?) Viewers, meanwhile, are limited in only being able to easily consume content on streaming services they subscribe to or VOD services they have accounts with.

You could certainly make the argument that platforms are able to create a better viewing experience because they take rough edges off user experience. They’re able to sell ads and monetize in ways an individual would never be able to do themselves–at least without open proposals for direct ad sales, but that’s a different conversation. But I, for one, would love a viewing product that is optimized for a better experience instead of having me spend more time.

We imagine a world where sites are CGC, not UGC–creator generated content, not user generated content. Could we do all of the above without a single platform that takes a large percentage of our revenue? A movie–even a small one like ours–has hundreds of different skill sets working on it. Why not add “digital distributor” and “martech consultant” to the mix?

By distributing the movie ourselves, we will miss out on the serendipity of the algorithm (”you might also like”), but we believe there’s a fair amount to gain.

What We’ve Learned So Far

The biggest lesson we’ve learned so far is that while creating our own tech stack and viewing platform was challenging at times, it was also possible. All the building blocks are out there: Stripe for credit card payments, Coil for web monetization, Google Cloud for cloud services, Mux for viewing video, Mailchimp for marketing, and so on. Instead of having to build a solution from scratch, there is a wide range of solutions to work with and assemble.

Our emphasis is currently on user experience. We recognize that we’re living in a time when a conventional film premiere, with an in-theatre screening and showings for the general public, simply isn’t possible in much of the world. The Faithful is a labor of love and we want our viewers to share in its screenings as much as possible.

The Faithful will premiere on March 18, and we’re keeping an eye on metrics and results from our initial screenings to share with the filmmaking community. Although we fully recognize we’re putting ourselves on the line by creating our own platform from scratch, we want to blaze a trail for other filmmakers to go DIY and put together viewing solutions themselves.

See for yourself. Tickets are available at the-faithful.com and are free for Coil members.

Opening this Thursday, July 11th, 6-8 PM! 360 video projection of 'THE WALL'

Please join me as I present a sneak peak of In Berlin, a VR film, along with my collaborators Cinematographer Katherin Machalek and Editor Cláudia Prat at the Integrated Channels exhibit curated by Cait Carvalho, Mary Hanlon and Natalie Conn at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP, The Wall, 360 video projection - excerpted from In Berlin VR film, NY, NY.

Featuring new and existing work from:

Melissa Montero
Katie Doyle & Sarah Johnsrude
Chris Gauthier
Dylan Marcheschi
Tatiana Stolpovskaya
Anne-Katrine Hansen
Wendy Cong Zhao
Nathan Fitch
Peter A. Jackson
Dena Kopolovich
Lily Lake
Janis Mahnure
Kayoko Nakamura 
Zoya Baker
Mary Hanlon
Katherin Machalek, Annie Berman, & Clàudia Prat

RSVP HERE for the opening reception, part of DUMBO’s First Thursday Art Walk

Thursday, July 11th, 6-8 PM

Made in NY Media Center by IFP

30 John St. 

Brooklyn, NY 11201